Game Shows

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You are kidding, ZedSimon. What a sense of humor!

Okily dokily. Just wondering.

Some people are on such whims sometimes.

Nah, I think WL's downfall came because of an overdose of celebrity episodes. Wouldn't you (well not you, as you don't like GS's ) rather see average people win money? This is what also undid past U.S. game shows like Bullseye...not the UK darts program, this was a Q&A show like The Joker's Wild in the early '80s. In its last year they only had celebrity contestants and really dumbed the show down. There was also Celebrity Hot Potato, which was a speck better cause the teams had one civilian contestant...but it took away the gimmick of teams having the same profession, and some of the stars weren't as serious about the game as the players.

Is WL still on in the UK?

James:

Yes, you are absolutely right about celebrity episodes on any game show.

By the way, the Weakest Link in the UK has been canceled.

Everyone, I was bored last night, so I bootlegged a CD of game show themes from different websites. I went to bed at 11:00 last night, and the CD was still copying. When I opened my eyes at 4:00 this morning, it was finished. This CD will be a delight to many people, including PhoenixKitten and CockneyRebel. If anyone would like the playlist, please e-mail me.

Okay... I could just stick to Sepultura!

I usually detest Gameshows - especially the ones featuring avaricious idiots who merely need to be lucky to 'win' prizes. There is something vaguely repellent about submitting to television exposure, in order to walk away with a few trinkets. I always wanted the contestants to lose.

There was one show that was so grotesque - it was called Strike it Lucky - that I just had to watch it.The feature of the show was an allegedly random penalty system called a Hot Spot. I was overjoyed when they lost due to the apperance of a Hot Spot.

I developed a bit of a 'silly thing' about it, because I ended up watching the shows and noting down team names, prizes, Hot Spot sequences and everything, and put them into a computerised database system. Unfortunately, the show was on at a time before the web and linux with its database systems and graphing packages were widely available, so I had to use dBASE II and dBASE IV to store the results. I was going to export the data to Lotus 123 and try to plot graphs and things, but I got caught up on coursework so couldn't get round to it.

I have just found the paper work and the original database tables, so I may re-create it, but as a Web App. with graphs and interactivity on my home server.

Here is a URL to a web page that mentions it: http://www.ukgameshows.com/index.php/St ... ke_It_Rich

[redacted to add the URL above]

Ok, Malcolm, I know different people have different opinions. Adversarial, did you know that "Strike it Lucky" was Americanized in the US as "Strike it Rich"? If my memory serves me correctly, it was the show with the couples. It was hosted in America by Joe Garagiola, a former baseball player.

Yep, though I think SiR came first, in 1986. And instead of the Hot Spots (and what is a Hot Spot? NOT A GOOD SPOT!) we had bandits...another thing I somehow found creepy in game shows.

Press Your Luck...NO Whammies...NO Whammies.

James, I didn't realize that some elements in Britain were different than some elements in America.

Stlf, I like "Press Your Luck" as well.

They used to say when is a good spot not a hot spot, but I loved it ([s]extatically) when the hot spots thwarted the greed and ambition of the grabmores who appeared on the show.

I have found most of the data from the 1994 series, and I shall write to teh television companies, to see if I can get the backlog on DVD. After that, I shall ensure that allthe information is extracted, put into a MySQL database system, then I shall programme a web site to make it possible for peopel to find out who lost which prizes when a Hot Spot appeared.

I am still somehwat perplexed as to precisely what a 'Brass Jardinniere' is, and I am somewhat distressed to recall that in Episode 2, Team One blood-sucked a Brass Jardinierre and a Jacobean Sofa without getting a Hot Spot.

I do have print outs of all the przies won, lost and forfeited in the series that was screened in 1994.

Equally however, I am pleased to note from my records. that in Episode 2, Team 3 lost some Silk Pyjamas and some Pink Champagne, when their greed got the better of them an they attempted the third prize.

Yes! they always had couples on it (somtimes even 'gay' ones) and the new Production Company had to call it 'Strike it Rich', because the old company would not release control of the 'Strike it Lucky' name.

Over here, we had the Grand Panjandrum Buffoon, Michael Barrymore, who was caught up in some Strange Controversies. The show disappeared when the Media PR people decided that he was too much of a Liability to be put on Mainstream TV. The fact remains however, that for those who watched his programmes for the 'legitimate' reasons, were still fans of his, while people like me who were Accumulating Data with A View to Usurpging the Prevailing Orthodoxies were indifferent to the allegations that dogged him.

Some might say that the gameshow format as exemplified by Strike it Lucky was obsolete, but I would say that it might be worth watching out for a comparable show that has a similar format, so that an entire database can be built from the ground up.

If you check the URL in one of my earlier posts, you will note a distressing paucity in the appearance of Hot Spots that occurred when the new Production Company took over. This is, I suspect, a rather regrettable appeasement to populist sentiment, which meant that the Avaricious Vultures stood a Massively Enahnced probability of scuttling away with the prizes, since there were a desultory Five, rather than the extremely necessary Eight Hot Spots on each screen matrix.

Believe it or not, Michael Barrymore was on American TV 15 years ago.

Another game show I liked was Match Game. I'm talking about the 70s version with Gene Rayburn. Charles Nelson Riley and Brett Sommers were a great duo. I liked those dumb dora quotes. Dumb Dora is so dumb, while going to the medicine cabinet, she accidently poked her eye out with (blank). The goal was to see if the contestant's answer matched with the celebrity pannel.

A few years ago, a remake of Match Game was made for syndication here in the U.S. staring Michael Burger as host. That was the sorriest game show remake I ever saw. First off, the top prize was only $5,000 dollars, cheap for the late 90s. The set was so cheap and half the questions had to do with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. No wonder whatever markets aired it did at 2 A.M.